this week in theater

ZERO HOUR: TOKYO ROSE’S LAST TAPE

Miwa Yanagi’s ZERO HOUR: TOKYO ROSE’S LAST TAPE will have its North American premiere at Japan Society this week (photo by Ayumi Sakamoto)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 29-31, $35, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.yanagimiwa.net

We’ve been fans of Japanese multidisciplinary artist Miwa Yanagi since her summer 2007 exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum, consisting of three photographic series that featured highly cinematic compositions and videos. So it comes as no surprise that the Kobe-born Yanagi is also now creating theatrical works and performance art projects. The North American premiere of Yanagi’s latest piece, Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose’s Last Tape, will take place January 29-31 at Japan Society as part of the institution’s “Stories from the War” series, being held in recognition of the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Conceived, written, and directed by Yanagi, who also designed the sets and costumes, Zero Hour follows one of the many women known as Tokyo Rose, who broadcast propaganda for the Japanese Imperial Army. The production, which will be performed in English and Japanese (with English subtitles) by Yohei Matsukado, Hinako Arao, Megumi Matsumoto, Ami Kobayashi, Sogo Nishimura, Aki, and Sachi Masuda, with video projection by Tadashi Mitani, lighting design by Akane Ikebe, sound design by Yasutaka Kobayakawa, and choreography by Megumi Matsumoto. The January 29 show will be followed by a meet-the-artists reception. “Stories from the War” continues through August with Michiko Godai in Yokohama Rosa April 25-26, New and Traditional Noh: Holy Mother in Nagasaki and Kiyotsune May 14-16, Meet the Author lectures by Julie Otsuka and Hayden Herrera, and the Globus Film Series “The Most Beautiful: The War Films of Shirley Yamaguchi & Setsuko Hara.”

HONEYMOON IN VEGAS

Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $69-$152
www.honeymoonbroadway.com

Perhaps what happens in Hollywood should stay in Hollywood. Musical adaptations of Hollywood dramas continue to flood Broadway, despite the lack of success experienced by such recent fare as The Bridges of Madison County, Big Fish, and Rocky. And now, before we can even think about Doctor Zhivago, An American in Paris, and Finding Neverland, we’ve been pummeled by Honeymoon in Vegas, which arrives on the East Coast smothered in glitz and glamor but ultimately coming up snake eyes. Writer-director Andrew Bergman, who has written and directed The Freshman and Striptease and written or cowritten The In-Laws and Fletch, has transformed his 1992 film into a Broadway musical that draws to an inside straight and falls desperately short. Rob McClure (Chaplin) stars as Jack Singer, a wimpy New Yorker in love with the beautiful Betsy Nolan (Brynn O’Malley); she is ready to get married, but he is terrified by a deathbed curse delivered by his mother, Bea (Nancy Opel), who has forbade him from ever taking a bride, claiming that no woman can love him like she did. Bea, ten years dead by this point, keeps popping up at crucial junctures, like in the middle of Tiffany’s when he’s about to buy a ring for Betsy. Betsy gives Jack an ultimatum, so he suddenly tells Betsy that they should fly immediately to Las Vegas and get married, no matter what his mother demanded. Off they go to Sin City, where Jack, a natural gambler, gets suckered into a poker game organized by the smooth-talking Tommy Korman (Tony Danza), a high-rolling mobster who thinks Betsy is a dead ringer for his late wife. When Jack can’t pay the fifty-eight grand he loses in the game, Tommy says he’ll call it even if he can borrow Betsy for the weekend. Furious at what Jack did, Betsy agrees to the deal, leaving Jack to either fight for her or give her up forever. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story if Jack just let her walk away, so he is soon off to Hawaii to win back his true love.

Bergman’s 1992 film featured established stars Nicolas Cage as Jack, James Caan as Tommy, Sarah Jessica Parker as Betsy, and Anne Bancroft as Jack’s mother. O’Malley, as the blond Betsty, is the breakout star of the Broadway musical, showing a natural talent for romantic comedy while also displaying a fine voice in such numbers as “Anywhere But Here” and “I’ve Been Thinking.” McClure does an admirable job as Jack, his highlight coming early on in “I Love Betsy.” The eminently likable Danza blows hot and cold, delivering on the mournful ballad “Out of the Sun” and the clever “Come to an Agreement,” but he stands around too much when he’s not involved in the immediate action, and a tap-dancing number was wholly unnecessary. The less said about Opel (Urinetown, Cinderella) in the thankless role of the mother the better. And yes, the Flying Elvises are in the building, but prepare to cringe. Brian C. Hemesath’s costumes are flashy, particularly in the Vegas nightclub scenes, while Denis Jones’s choreography is relatively flat and lifeless. The music and lyrics, by popular and critical darling Jason Robert Brown (The Bridges of Madison County, Parade, The Last Five Years), are, for the most part, surprisingly standard and uninteresting. (“Jump jump / jumpity jump”?) Another surprise was that there was no standing ovation at the end, since audiences seem to jump jump jumpity jump to their feet after most splashy musicals these days, no matter the quality. But maybe they could tell too that this Honeymoon in Vegas is in need of a Haitian divorce.

THE IRISH REP READING SERIES: CHESTER BAILEY

Reed Birney will take a break from his starring role in IM GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD to participate in Irish Rep Reading Series (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Reed Birney will take a break from his starring role in I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD to participate in free Irish Rep Reading Series on January 30 with Noah Robbins (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Who: The Irish Repertory Theatre
What: Staged reading of Joseph Dougherty’s Chester Bailey
Where: DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th St. between Park Ave. South & Irving Pl., 212-727-2737
When: Friday, January 30, free (advance reservations strongly suggested), 3:00
Why: The Irish Rep Reading Series continues with Tony nominee Reed Birney (I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Casa Valentina) and Noah Robbins (Punk Rock, Brighton Beach Memoirs) reading WWII-set drama by Emmy-nominated writer and producer Joseph Dougherty (Thirtysomething, Saving Grace, Digby), directed by Emmy and Tony nominee Ron Lagomarsino (Digby, Driving Miss Daisy, Pretty Little Liars); Irish Rep literary manager Kara Manning explains that the series “gives playwrights, both emerging and more established, the invaluable opportunity to develop their new work in a supportive, safe environment and will also introduce some Irish playwrights, especially those who might not yet have the New York recognition they merit, to an American audience.”

DA

Ciarán O’Reilly and Paul O’Brien star as a son and father looking back at the past in DA (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $70
212-727-2737
www.irishrep.org

During renovation of its permanent home on West Twenty-Second St., the Irish Repertory Theatre has moved into the cozy DR2 Theatre in Union Square, presenting a cozy revival of Hugh Leonard’s cozy Tony-winning 1978 play, Da. It’s May 1968, and Charlie (Irish Rep producing director Ciarán O’Reilly) has returned to the cluttered family home in Dublin following the death of his father, who he called Da (Paul O’Brien). While cleaning up the house, he is visited by his childhood friend Oliver (the curiously coiffed John Keating), who starts dredging up memories for Charlie. As soon as Oliver leaves, Charlie, a playwright, is then visited by his late father, a gardener who seems not quite ready for the afterlife, instead hanging around, sitting in his chair, and preparing for tea. “I’ve a cupful,” Charlie says. “It’s empty,” Da responds. “It’s full,” the son declares, setting the stage for the two to confront disagreements they had as father and son. As the memories flood forth, Charlie watches his younger self (Adam Petherbridge) flirt with local girl Mary Tate (Nicola Murphy) and get a job with the strict, straightforward Drumm (Sean Gormley); his beloved mother, Maggie Tynan (Fiana Toibin), is back as well. “I’d forgotten what she looked like,” the older Charlie says wistfully. He watches scenes from his and his family’s life play out right in front of him but can’t do anything about it, wondering if he made the right choices. But at the center of it all is Charlie’s relationship with Da, who often embarrassed him, particularly when it came to girls, Hitler, and his mother. “Say nothing. Ignore him,” Charlie tells his younger self at the beginning of the second act as his father is relating an old story. But it’s too late to change things now.

Revival of Hugh Leonards Tony-winning play is at the Irish Reps temporary home in Union Square (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Revival of Hugh Leonard’s Tony-winning play is at Irish Rep’s temporary home in Union Square (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Rep artistic director Charlotte Moore guides the production with a gentle hand as the characters move between the past and the present on James Morgan’s comfy living room/kitchen set. It takes a while to warm to O’Brien and O’Reilly as father and son, because they appear to be too close in age, but once things get going, the characters all fall into step. O’Reilly is pensive and reflective as Charlie, who does not want to look back at what was and what could have been. O’Brien is somewhat rough at first but soon settles down in a role made famous by Barnard Hughes in the original Tony-winning Broadway production in 1978, which featured Brian Murray as Charlie, Sylvia O’Brien as Charlie’s mother, and Mia Dillon as Mary Tate. (Matt Clark’s 1988 film starred Hughes as Da, Martin Sheen as Charlie, and William Hickey as Drumm.) Da is a lovely little play, a tenderhearted story of the ties that bind family together — and that can lead to a painful loss of innocence.

I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD

Ella (Betty Gilpin) and David (Reed Birney) share an unusual father-daughter relationship in new Halley Feiffer play (photo by Ahron Foster)

Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 1, $20-$45
www.atlantictheater.org

Theater critics are taking quite a beating these days. In Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play, F. Murray Abraham portrays a snarky critic who wants to feel included at an opening-night part for a new Broadway show. In Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Oscar-nominated Birdman, Lindsay Duncan plays a vicious New York Times critic who can’t wait to eviscerate a former Hollywood star’s (Michael Keaton) big debut on the Great White Way. And now in Halley Feiffer’s I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, a playwright father (Reed Birney) and his actor daughter (Betty Gilpin) skewer critics right from the start. “They are a sick cadre of pathetic, sniveling, tiny men with micropenises and no imaginations who write out of their asses and who love to tear you down because in truth they know that you are doing exactly what they could never do — that you are doing the only thing they have ever wanted to do — and they are fucking jealous,” David, winner of a Pulitzer and two Tonys for such plays as Gavalt! and Four Questions, lashes out. “You know that, don’t you? How jealous they are? They’re boiling with envy. They want a piece of you. They want in. They wanna get inside you! They wanna climb right in!” That mini-soliloquy, which of course contains more than a morsel of truth, is part of a kind of vitriolic halftime locker-room pep talk David is giving to Ella, who has been passed over for the role of Nina in The Seagull, losing out to a sexy ingénue who, David argues, uses her assets to get what she wants. (Ellas is cast as Masha instead.) Smoking and drinking with a passion, David rips apart theater as a whole, not just critics, barely leaving room for Ella to sycophantically scream back at him such words of shock and agreement (and ecstasy) as “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Right!” “Yes!” and “Oh god!” It’s not a pleasant conversation to listen in on — and one can only hope it’s not based on fact, as Feiffer is an actress (The House of Blue Leaves, The Substance of Fire) as well as a playwright (How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them) and the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer.

Father and daughter investigate the state of their lives and careers in I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD (photo by Ahron Foster)

I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard takes place on Mark Wendland’s cluttered Upper West Side apartment set, which runs three rooms deep instead of across, creating a narrow, claustrophobic space that barely contains the fiery emotions streaming out of David and Ella. The second scene is far shorter than the first, almost more of a coda, taking place on the floor instead of the stage, as the set is now the black box theater itself, a transition that is wholly successful. But Birney (Casa Valentina, Circle Mirror Transformations), one of New York’s most deservedly busiest actors — he’s also starring in Feiffer and Ryan Spahn’s upcoming web series What’s Your Emergency? — and Gilpin (Heartless, Nurse Jackie) make for a rather odd couple, forming an unsettling and hard-to-believe father-daughter dynamic that is often difficult to watch. But then Feiffer and director Trip Cullman (Punk Rock, Murder Ballad) tear it all apart in a brash, brutal finale that is actually a disappointing cop-out. I’m Gonna Pray So Hard for You is a relentlessly nasty and bitter play, and although often that works, in this case, by the end, you’ll be praying for someone, anyone, to just lighten up.

JACK FERVER: NIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Sunday, January 18, $20, 7:00
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.jackferver.org

In 1964, dancer, actor, and choreographer Fred Herko, a native New Yorker, took a bath at a friend’s house, then danced naked right out the window, committing suicide at the age of twenty-eight. A half century later, dancer, actor, and choreographer Jack Ferver, born in Wisconsin fifteen years after Herko’s death, uses Herko’s story to examine his own life, which includes battling depression and suicidal thoughts. The bare-bones show, which premiered this past week at the Abrons Arts Center Playhouse as part of the American Realness festival, begins with Ferver prancing around an empty stage while glancing at himself, and the audience, through an oval mirror in his hands, immediately announcing that while Night Light Bright Light might ostensibly be a tribute to Herko, it is very much about Ferver. In such previous works as Two Alike, Rumble Ghost, and All of a Sudden, Ferver has employed pop-culture references, awkward and inventive movement, experimental music, and public confession with a bold intimacy that makes his devoted audiences burst out in laughter as well as squirm uncomfortably in their seats — often at the same time — and that’s very much the case with this latest piece. Joined by friend and costume designer Reid Bartelme, who displays a fine balletic grace and wry sense of humor, Ferver apologizes for Night Light Bright Light being so spare while his previous piece, Chambre, which debuted at Bard in November, was so elegant and fancy; reenacts a memory from his childhood, force-feeding himself imaginary pudding; delves into the nature of therapy and rehab, wondering if they could have helped save Herko; channels Madonna and Blanche DuBois; talks about the surprise suicide of a young costar in a 1999 film; and playfully performs several pas de deux with Bartelme, featuring some very funny choreography. Ferver ends the nearly hour-long show with a video that gets to the heart of what his work is all about, combining extreme highs and devastating lows in riotous yet heartbreaking ways that will have some people in stitches, others praying that it ends quickly. Fortunately, there seems to be no end to Ferver’s unique brand of creativity.

SECOND STAGE THEATRE: BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY is making a return engagement at Second Stage (photo by Kevin Thomas Garcia)

Who: Second Stage Theatre
What: Between Riverside and Crazy
Where: Tony Kiser Theatre, 305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
When: January 16-31, $79-$125
Why: One of the best plays of 2014, the Atlantic Theater Company’s splendid production of Between Riverside and Crazy is back for another run, transferring to Second Stage January 16-31. Nearly the entire cast is returning for the play, written by Stephen Adly Guirgis and directed by Austin Pendleton, which deals with an ornery former beat cop who was shot by a fellow police officer and is refusing to accept a settlement from the city. The wonderful Stephen McKinley Henderson is back as Pops, with Victor Almanzar as Oswaldo, Rosal Colón as Lulu, Elizabeth Canavan as Audrey, Michael Rispoli as Lt. Caro, and Liza Colón-Zayas as the new church lady; the always excellent Ron Cephas Jones replaces Ray Anthony Thomas as Junior. The first time around, we noted that “Between Riverside and Crazy again demonstrates [Guirgis’s] sharp ear for dialogue and his keen sense of characterization as he creates complex, realistic situations filled with surprise twists and turns.” You can read our full review of the original production here.